Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Real events too strange to have made the textbook.
Lake Mills, WI
Large platform mounds and reconstructed stockade sections mark the remains of a major Mississippian settlement occupied roughly a thousand years ago. The state's most prominent archaeological park gives travelers a rare public look at monumental pre-contact earthworks.
Sayner, WI
Sayner celebrates Carl Eliason's 1924 motor toboggan, an important ancestor of the modern snowmobile. The local museum preserves early machines and Northwoods history, turning a tiny community into a pilgrimage point for snowmobile enthusiasts.
Lake Geneva, WI
A wealthy Chicago brewing family built this Queen Anne summer estate above Geneva Lake in the 1880s. Many visitors arrive by boat, climb a long staircase from the shore and enter a house still packed with generations of family objects.
Milwaukee, WI
Forest Home is one of Milwaukee's great historic cemeteries, filled with elaborate monuments and the graves of major figures from the city's brewing, industrial and political history. Local ghost stories have attached themselves to the landscape, but its stronger OddWay value is the dense collection of unusual monuments and Milwaukee history.
Appleton, WI
Built in 1882, Hearthstone became one of the first residences in the world powered by a centrally located hydroelectric station using the Edison system. Restored interiors preserve both Victorian domestic life and the startling early arrival of electric lighting.
Two Rivers, WI
Two Rivers claims that the first ice cream sundae was served here in 1881. A marker and the Washington House Museum preserve the local version of the origin story, which remains disputed by other communities but has become a durable piece of American food folklore.
Manitowish Waters, WI
In April 1934, federal agents attempted to capture John Dillinger and members of his gang at this remote lodge, leading to a chaotic gun battle. The restaurant still embraces the history, and bullet damage and memorabilia preserve one of the most famous episodes of the Dillinger manhunt.
Sheboygan, WI
Timbers from the schooner Lottie Cooper, wrecked in an 1894 storm, were recovered during harbor construction and reassembled outdoors near the waterfront. The exposed wooden skeleton lets visitors walk around the remains of a nineteenth-century Great Lakes ship on dry land.
Baraboo, WI
This surviving effigy mound was built in the shape of a human figure by Indigenous mound builders centuries ago. It is the only known anthropomorphic effigy mound in North America still largely intact, and a county park protects the site.
Milton, WI
This distinctive hexagonal 1844 inn is Wisconsin's only certified Underground Railroad site. Guided tours interpret the Goodrich family, abolitionist activity and a concealed passage associated with people escaping slavery.
Mineral Point, WI
Stone cottages built by Cornish miners survive along a steep Mineral Point street and now form a Wisconsin Historical Society site. The preserved buildings tell the story of immigration, lead mining and a restoration movement that helped save the town's unusual architecture.
Peshtigo, WI
The museum preserves artifacts and accounts from the October 8, 1871 Peshtigo Fire, the deadliest wildfire in recorded U.S. history. Beside it, a mass grave holds unidentified victims, creating a powerful and somber stop that should be visited respectfully.
Friendship, WI
A sandstone outcrop rises abruptly above central Wisconsin and preserves Indigenous rock art along its base. A stairway also climbs the formation seasonally for long views, but visitors must stay off protected petroglyph surfaces.
Fountain City, WI
In 1995, a massive boulder broke from the bluff and crashed directly into this house. Rather than remove the rock, the owners preserved the damage as a tiny museum, leaving the enormous stone lodged inside the building where it came to rest.
Manitowoc, WI
A brass ring embedded in North 8th Street marks where a fragment associated with the Soviet Sputnik IV spacecraft crashed back to Earth in 1962. Manitowoc later embraced the bizarre Cold War incident with the annual Sputnikfest celebration.
Milwaukee, WI
A medieval European chapel dismantled and moved to the United States now stands in the middle of Marquette University's campus. Its stones were reassembled in Milwaukee, creating a genuine piece of medieval architecture in an unexpectedly modern setting.
Rock Springs, WI
This roadside quartzite outcrop played an important role in geologist Charles Van Hise's work interpreting folded and metamorphosed rock layers. A scientific landmark sits almost directly beside the highway, turning a rock face into a stop in the history of geology.
Prairie du Chien, WI
This Victorian estate stands on St. Feriole Island at a site tied to the Dousman family, the fur trade and the long cultural history of Prairie du Chien. Restored interiors and outbuildings preserve an unusually complete upper-class nineteenth-century estate on the Mississippi frontier.
Cornell, WI
A preserved mechanical pulpwood stacker rises over Mill Yard Park, once used to pile enormous quantities of cut timber for the paper industry. Its skeletal machinery makes it look like industrial sculpture while preserving a highly specific piece of Wisconsin logging technology.
